


Beloved Freak

by idrilhadhafang



Series: Intersections [3]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Amilyn Holdo-Centric, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Enemies to Friends, Gen, Heroic Sacrifice, Minor Poe Dameron/Ben Solo, Movie: Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Past Poe Dameron/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Sort Of, past bullying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27846086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang/pseuds/idrilhadhafang
Summary: Amilyn Holdo, during the events of the expedition to Crait.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Intersections [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2025694
Kudos: 1
Collections: Allbingo, Bad Day Collection





	Beloved Freak

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Pastel
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing.
> 
> Author’s Notes: Title from the Garbage song of the same name. I don’t usually (ish) write Holdo, especially in this light, but I had a shit-tacular day and needed to come to grips with some of my self-esteem issues/imposter syndrome. Also, not condemning either Poe or Holdo here, just portraying them as people.

She can feel the others’ eyes on her, the way they scrutinize her. The way they look from her hair (dyed pink this time. Amilyn Holdo was always one to believe in artistic expression, and everything like that, even if the Gatalentans found her odd) to her dress. They’re wondering, judging. _What’s some idiot wearing a dress in the military doing there?_ they’re most likely thinking.   
  
Amilyn’s seen it before. People who think that just because a woman dresses outside of the truly garish Republic uniforms, she’s somehow unworthy of being listened to. It’s not that she’s a woman. It’s the idea that she just can’t be taken seriously. Funny Ami, that’s what some of the crueler Gatalentan children called her, when Amilyn first didn’t know how to handle them. When she was awkward, adrift in the galaxy in a way without actually feeling the bleakness of space around her.   
  
It’s the same sense that she gets from people like the blond woman with braids, the woman who Amilyn decides she won’t get along with at all. And Poe Dameron.   
  
Ben Solo thought the galaxy of Poe Dameron. Somehow, so far, Amilyn isn’t impressed — she doesn’t think she’d actually get that impression just from a lifted chin, but here he is.   
  
She gives her speech, at least. She knows that people are staring at her, almost like they’re thinking, “What is _that_ doing here?”, but she’s Vice Admiral Holdo for a reason.   
  
She might as well own being a freak.   
  
***  
  
Poe Dameron is doing nothing to help his case when it comes to him thinking she’s a freak. She has to bite back the urge to shout at him, if she’s to be perfectly honest: she’s had infinitely more experience than him, a hotshot pilot who got her bombing fleet killed through his own persistence and idiocy.   
  
(Leia said that he had a big heart. Amilyn hasn’t seen it yet. Maybe it hasn’t come out around her yet)  
  
She shouldn’t be too harsh on him, Amilyn thinks. But dear stars, his questions, his acting like he’s somehow in charge of the mission, makes her want to snap at him and say he’s an idiot who thinks that somehow he’s the expert on tactics never mind she was working on her military career when he was learning to walk.   
  
But she doesn’t say that.   
  
(She does take a sickly sweet jab at him being impulsive and reckless. It’s in private that she ends up regretting it. Amilyn Holdo doesn’t like being petty or passive aggressive, even when the person it’s aimed at is doing high kicks on her last nerve)  
  
***  
  
It escalates. Damn Poe, Amilyn thinks when the dust’s settled momentarily. Though she can’t say that it was because he was evil, or a traitor. The fact he only ordered his mutiny crew to stun her, D’Acy and the others...it does at least suggest he wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. Even in his tirade on the bridge, she didn’t sense a desire to compete and win.  
  
“It was love,” Leia says to her. “There’s four types of it, Amilyn. One of them being love for all sentient beings. You probably felt it, didn’t you, when you heard him. From what I understand.”  
  
The outburst on the bridge. It wasn’t machismo. Hatred. Even when Amilyn had gotten angry enough at being called a coward and a traitor to order Poe off the bridge, she knew that it was fear that was getting to him. Fear, watching good people be vaporized by a sadist like Hux and being able to do nothing about it. Amilyn had felt it, deep in her bones, when she had seen that transmission of the medical bay captain sacrificing himself so his other crewmembers could escape. Her younger self, immature and adrift, had thought death to be the next great adventure.   
  
It was different when it was war.   
  
And Poe...maybe that was where Leia said he had a good heart. That was where Leia said he was a good person. Because he felt too much. Because he felt to the point it hurt, for complete strangers, for acquaintances. He loved everyone — and everyone died.   
  
It occurs to Amilyn that she feels sorry for him.  
  
“That one’s a troublemaker. I like him,” she says to Leia. Even putting aside Poe’s all-loving-hero nature, just for a bit, Amilyn can almost see, say, Jyn Erso pulling that stunt. She really can.   
  
***  
  
She has to stay behind. It’s the culmination of her younger self’s fascination with death — embracing it, this time, to save others. To save the Resistance, save the galaxy. Save Leia.  
  
She knows what she has to do. Hyperspace jumps can do remarkable things. This is one of them.   
  
Holdo makes her jump.   
  
They’ll never see her coming.


End file.
